Sunday Posts

We are the stories we tell about ourselves. I am one of those writers in search of a story. That story has not appeared, yet. But I am always crafting one. In this, it is not the start that confounds me. It has already begun - I am in it! The reason I have never written because I can not end it.  Because I lack courage. Around me, so many stories begin and end everyday. In fact, I also see beginnings are endings too. But I still can't write about it. Happily-ever-after is cliché, death or departure is beyond contemplation, something dramatic is too unreal! In that sense, I live in the precipice of the story, that kind of safe bourgeois existence where nothing really should happen. Therefore, I am just going from chapter to chapter. But the script is becoming quite predictable now. Characters seem to be desperate for something to happen now. The narrative is becoming one of those overextended TV series whose writers have run out of ideas. Something got to happen - and I am waiting.

I spend a lot of time speaking with educators. Most of these conversations are about two things: How the world is changing and how higher education does NOT need to change. The assumption is that there is an unmutable core of higher ed: Some type of transcendent purpose beyond the question of practical application and economic returns, beyond here and now, something that can not be or should not be measured. This is very hard to argue against. What kind of lowlife I would be to question an educator dedicated to building better lives?  But I usually leave with a question. If we want to improve lives, is getting the students to attend school and making them read textbooks the best way to do it? Besides, we don't even do it for free: We make them pay for the pleasure of becoming a better person and often their parents have to sell their land (or liquidate family savings) to be able to afford it.  For me, there is indeed an unchanging core of higher education - that to be able to take